THE CITY AS A COMMONS

How can city squares, urban green spaces, cultural heritage, abandoned buildings, roads and other urban infrastructure, services or other resources and goods be governed as commons?

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Can cities be conceived as institutions for collective action and therefore run as commons?

Inspired by the recently implemented Bologna Regulation on Collaboration for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons, as well as by other commons-based experiments in cities around Italy by the LabGov project (e.g. Co-Mantova, Co-Battipaglia and Co-Palermo), the 1st IASC Thematic Conference on the Urban Commons will bring together leading scholars, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and social innovators to take stock of the developments in the interdisciplinary study of the urban commons and related questions of urban governance.

Although the urban commons has increasingly appeared as a topic of scholarly inquiry, there has yet to be sustained attention to the research questions, methodologies, and disciplinary approaches necessary to more fully conceptualize and develop the idea of the “urban commons” and the new challenges and facets it introduces into the ongoing study of the commons in diverse fields.

The conference will seek to better understand the idea of urban commons at different scales, under what circumstances and contexts urban commons emerge, what contributes to their durability and effectiveness, and what undermines them. The conference will stress the importance of an “urban commons narrative” for urban infrastructure, urban welfare, and urban development. Additionally, the conference will focus on questions of urban governance and will explore different frameworks for governing common urban resources, and the city, in a collaborative manner. The conference will highlight six thematic questions, which are:

Conference Tracks

Conceiving the Urban Commons

Mapping the Urban Commons

The Urban Commons and Democratic Innovation

The Collaborative Sharing Economy as the Basis for a Commons-Based Urban Economy

Social innovation as the Basis for a Commons-Based Urban Welfare

Designing and Governing the City as a Commons

Opificio Golinelli

Via Paolo Nanni Costa 14,

40133 Bologna

Conference Registration

5th of November

You can accredit from 4:00 PM to 7:30 PM at Urban Center, in Piazza Nettuno – 3 – second floor

6th – 7th of November

You can accredit from 8.30 AM to 10.30 AM directly at the venue in Opificio Golinelli.

Important deadlines for paper presenters and for auditors

10TH AUGUST 2015

Abstracts had to be submitted for any of the six thematic tracks described above. The abstracts shall consist of a 500 word maximum description of the research or paper and its originality or value for urban commons studies

15TH SEPTEMBER 2015

All submissions have been reviewed by an international review committee on the basis of scientific quality, relevance to the conference themes and originality. Abstracts acceptance have been announced by September 15th, 2015